Abstract
Aromatic contaminants of the environment, to which belongs phenol and its derivatives, are toxic and in the most of the cases hard to degrade. A strain belonging to the genus Pseudomonas was characterized by high effectiveness of growth in different concentrations of phenol, which was used as carbon and energy source. The isolate of the novel strain of P.aeruginosa was used to minimize time for degrading environmental samples containing high content of phenol. Phenol utilization rates were estimated from the amount of phenol degraded. Experimental results offer the opportunity to compare the results of novel strain of P.aeruginosa cells, and cell-free extra cellular crude enzyme protein. The use of extra cellular and/or cell-free crude enzymes has been also proposed as an innovative remediation technique. They can offer some advantages over the use of microbial cells. The highest removal efficiencies 99% within 6h in terms of quantity of phenol removed were achieved when treating with cell-free crude enzymes, biodegraded phenol more rapidly than cells. The use of enzymes was desirable because they can perform the same function as many harsher chemicals. Protein concentration in cell-free crude enzymes was determined and was about 55gm/ml. The Molecular weight of novel strain of P.aeruginosa cell-free crude enzymes protein separated by SDS-PAGE was approximately 51 kDa. Detoxification by enzymes rather than by the whole microbial cells is practically beneficial because enzymes sometime can tolerate environmental extremes better than the whole microbial cells.
